Description

CREATE ROLE adds a new role to a
PostgreSQL database cluster. A
role is an entity that can own database objects and have database
privileges; a role can be considered a "user", a "group", or
both depending on how it is used. Refer to Chapter 18 and Chapter 20 for information about
managing users and authentication. You must have CREATEROLE privilege or be a database superuser to
use this command.

Note that roles are defined at the database cluster level, and
so are valid in all databases in the cluster.

Parameters

name

The name of the new role.

SUPERUSERNOSUPERUSER

These clauses determine whether the new role is a
"superuser", who can override
all access restrictions within the database. Superuser
status is dangerous and should be used only when really
needed. You must yourself be a superuser to create a new
superuser. If not specified, NOSUPERUSER is the default.

CREATEDBNOCREATEDB

These clauses define a role's ability to create
databases. If CREATEDB is
specified, the role being defined will be allowed to create
new databases. Specifying NOCREATEDB will deny a role the ability to
create databases. If not specified, NOCREATEDB is the default.

CREATEROLENOCREATEROLE

These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted
to create new roles (that is, execute CREATE ROLE). A role with CREATEROLE privilege can also alter and drop
other roles. If not specified, NOCREATEROLE is the default.

CREATEUSERNOCREATEUSER

These clauses are an obsolete, but still accepted,
spelling of SUPERUSER and
NOSUPERUSER. Note that they are
not equivalent to
CREATEROLE as one might naively
expect!

INHERITNOINHERIT

These clauses determine whether a role "inherits" the privileges of roles it is a
member of. A role with the INHERIT
attribute can automatically use whatever database
privileges have been granted to all roles it is directly or
indirectly a member of. Without INHERIT, membership in another role only
grants the ability to SET ROLE to
that other role; the privileges of the other role are only
available after having done so. If not specified,
INHERIT is the default.

LOGINNOLOGIN

These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to log
in; that is, whether the role can be given as the initial
session authorization name during client connection. A role
having the LOGIN attribute can be
thought of as a user. Roles without this attribute are
useful for managing database privileges, but are not users
in the usual sense of the word. If not specified,
NOLOGIN is the default, except
when CREATE ROLE is invoked
through its alternate spelling CREATE
USER.

CONNECTION LIMITconnlimit

If role can log in, this specifies how many concurrent
connections the role can make. -1 (the default) means no
limit.

PASSWORDpassword

Sets the role's password. (A password is only of use for
roles having the LOGIN attribute,
but you can nonetheless define one for roles without it.)
If you do not plan to use password authentication you can
omit this option.

ENCRYPTEDUNENCRYPTED

These key words control whether the password is stored
encrypted in the system catalogs. (If neither is specified,
the default behavior is determined by the configuration
parameter password_encryption.)
If the presented password string is already in
MD5-encrypted format, then it is stored encrypted as-is,
regardless of whether ENCRYPTED or
UNENCRYPTED is specified (since
the system cannot decrypt the specified encrypted password
string). This allows reloading of encrypted passwords
during dump/restore.

Note that older clients may lack support for the MD5
authentication mechanism that is needed to work with
passwords that are stored encrypted.

VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'

The VALID UNTIL clause sets a
date and time after which the role's password is no longer
valid. If this clause is omitted the password will be valid
for all time.

IN ROLErolename

The IN ROLE clause lists one or
more existing roles to which the new role will be
immediately added as a new member. (Note that there is no
option to add the new role as an administrator; use a
separate GRANT command to do
that.)

IN GROUProlename

IN GROUP is an obsolete
spelling of IN ROLE.

ROLErolename

The ROLE clause lists one or
more existing roles which are automatically added as
members of the new role. (This in effect makes the new role
a "group".)

ADMINrolename

The ADMIN clause is like
ROLE, but the named roles are
added to the new role WITH ADMIN
OPTION, giving them the right to grant membership in
this role to others.

USERrolename

The USER clause is an obsolete
spelling of the ROLE clause.

SYSIDuid

The SYSID clause is ignored,
but is accepted for backwards compatibility.

Notes

Use ALTER ROLE to
change the attributes of a role, and DROP ROLE to remove a role. All the
attributes specified by CREATE ROLE can
be modified by later ALTER ROLE
commands.

The preferred way to add and remove members of roles that are
being used as groups is to use GRANT and REVOKE.

The VALID UNTIL clause defines an
expiration time for a password only, not for the role per se. In particular, the expiration time is
not enforced when logging in using a non-password-based
authentication method.

The INHERIT attribute governs
inheritance of grantable privileges (that is, access privileges
for database objects and role memberships). It does not apply to
the special role attributes set by CREATE
ROLE and ALTER ROLE. For example,
being a member of a role with CREATEDB
privilege does not immediately grant the ability to create
databases, even if INHERIT is set; it
would be necessary to become that role via SET ROLE before creating a database.

The INHERIT attribute is the default
for reasons of backwards compatibility: in prior releases of
PostgreSQL, users always had
access to all privileges of groups they were members of. However,
NOINHERIT provides a closer match to the
semantics specified in the SQL standard.

Be careful with the CREATEROLE
privilege. There is no concept of inheritance for the privileges
of a CREATEROLE-role. That means that
even if a role does not have a certain privilege but is allowed
to create other roles, it can easily create another role with
different privileges than its own (except for creating roles with
superuser privileges). For example, if the role "user" has the CREATEROLE
privilege but not the CREATEDB
privilege, nonetheless it can create a new role with the
CREATEDB privilege. Therefore, regard
roles that have the CREATEROLE privilege
as almost-superuser-roles.

PostgreSQL includes a program
createuser that has
the same functionality as CREATE ROLE
(in fact, it calls this command) but can be run from the command
shell.

The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only
enforced approximately; if two new sessions start at about the
same time when just one connection "slot" remains for the role, it is possible that
both will fail. Also, the limit is never enforced for
superusers.

Examples

Create a role that can log in, but don't give it a
password:

CREATE ROLE jonathan LOGIN;

Create a role with a password:

CREATE USER davide WITH PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4';

(CREATE USER is the same as
CREATE ROLE except that it implies
LOGIN.)

Create a role with a password that is valid until the end of
2004. After one second has ticked in 2005, the password is no
longer valid.

CREATE ROLE miriam WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4' VALID UNTIL '2005-01-01';

Create a role that can create databases and manage roles:

CREATE ROLE admin WITH CREATEDB CREATEROLE;

Compatibility

The CREATE ROLE statement is in the
SQL standard, but the standard only requires the syntax

CREATE ROLE name [ WITH ADMIN rolename ]

Multiple initial administrators, and all the other options of
CREATE ROLE, are PostgreSQL extensions.

The SQL standard defines the concepts of users and roles, but
it regards them as distinct concepts and leaves all commands
defining users to be specified by each database implementation.
In PostgreSQL we have chosen to
unify users and roles into a single kind of entity. Roles
therefore have many more optional attributes than they do in the
standard.

The behavior specified by the SQL standard is most closely
approximated by giving users the NOINHERIT attribute, while roles are given the
INHERIT attribute.

See Also

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